The studio lights were always a bit too bright for John Banner, even years after the show had finished its run. He sat there on the talk show couch, his famous girth settled comfortably, a warm, grandfatherly smile crinkling the corners of his eyes.

The interviewer, a young man who had clearly grown up watching Stalag 13 every Friday night, leaned in with a look of pure reverence. He held up a grainy, black-and-white Polaroid that a fan had sent into the station earlier that week.

In the photo, Banner was in full Sergeant Schultz attire, standing in what looked like the middle of a crowded department store. He was leaning down, looking intensely serious, whispering into the ear of a very small boy who was wearing a plastic toy helmet and a trench coat three sizes too big.

John looked at the photo, and a deep, melodic chuckle started in his chest, vibrating through the microphone clipped to his lapel. He adjusted his glasses and sighed with a kind of nostalgic exhaustion that only an actor who has spent years in a heavy wool uniform can truly understand.

The interviewer asked if he remembered that specific day. John nodded slowly, the smile never leaving his face. He explained that it was during the height of the show’s popularity, around 1968, when the network sent the cast on a grueling promotional tour through the Midwest.

They were in a massive store in Ohio, and the line of fans stretched out the door and around the block. John had been signing autographs for three hours, repeating his famous catchphrases until his voice was raspy, when this particular little boy approached the table.

Most children wanted to know if the schnaps was real or if he actually liked Colonel Klink. But this boy was different. He didn’t have a pen. He didn’t have a piece of paper for an autograph. He had a look of absolute, terrifying mission-focus on his face.

He walked up to the table, ignored the security guards, and stared directly at John’s brass buttons. The boy’s hands were shoved deep into his pockets, and he was vibrating with a nervous energy that made the entire table rattle.

John leaned forward, ready to give the boy a standard “Schultz” wink and a “Ho-ho!” But the boy didn’t laugh. He leaned over the table, his face just inches from John’s, and his voice was a frantic, barely audible whisper.

He reached into his pocket, pulled out a crumpled, grease-stained napkin, and looked at me with pure, unadulterated desperation.

The boy shoved the napkin toward me like it was a live grenade. I unfolded it carefully, expecting a drawing of a tank or maybe a stick figure of Hogan. Instead, I saw a hand-drawn map of the department store’s basement, complete with arrows pointing toward the “Emergency Exit” near the loading docks.

The boy whispered, “The tunnel is ready, Sergeant. We have a truck waiting behind the washing machine display. You have to leave now before the Commandant finds out.”

I sat there, frozen. The entire room seemed to go silent. I looked at this child, who couldn’t have been more than seven years old, and realized he wasn’t playing a game. To him, I wasn’t an actor from Vienna who had fled the real-life horrors of the war to find a career in Hollywood. To him, I was a man behind barbed wire who desperately needed to go home.

I looked up at his mother, who was standing behind him, looking absolutely mortified. She tried to grab his shoulder, but he shook her off, never breaking eye contact with me. He was the most serious member of the French Resistance I had ever encountered, and he was currently operating out of a Sears in Cincinnati.

I knew I couldn’t break character. If I told him I was just John Banner, the actor, I would break his heart. But if I stayed as Schultz, I was technically encouraging a child to help a “POW” escape a retail outlet.

So, I did the only thing I could do. I leaned in, looked left, looked right, and tucked the napkin into my sleeve with a flourish of exaggerated secrecy. I gave him the most intense Schultz look I could muster—the one where my eyes went wide and my chin tucked into my neck.

I whispered back, “I see nothing! I see no map! I see no washing machines!”

The boy’s eyes lit up with a mix of terror and triumph. But he wasn’t finished. He reached back into his other pocket and pulled out a half-eaten, slightly lint-covered Hershey bar. He pushed it toward me and said, “Take this. You’ll need the energy for the climb.”

The crowd around us finally realized what was happening and a wave of laughter broke out, but the boy stayed stone-faced. He gave me a sharp, crisp salute, turned on his heel, and marched out of the store without looking back once.

When I got back to the set in Hollywood the following Monday, I told the story to the rest of the guys during a break in the barracks.

Bob Crane nearly fell off his bunk laughing. He kept shouting, “Schultz, you’re a double agent! You’ve got the youth of America smuggling chocolate into the Stalag!”

But it was Werner Klemperer who had the best reaction. Werner, who was the most sophisticated, classically trained man you’d ever meet, stayed perfectly in character as Colonel Klink. He adjusted his monocle, glared at me, and said, “Banner, if I find one more Hershey bar in your quarters, I shall have you transferred to the Russian front… or at least to the hardware department in Ohio.”

We laughed about that for weeks. Every time a scene went wrong or a line was flubbed, someone would whisper, “Is the truck behind the washing machines yet, John?”

It became a bit of a legendary joke among the crew. The prop masters even started hiding little pieces of chocolate inside my prop helmet just to see if I’d notice during a take. There was one episode where I had to take my hat off to salute Klink, and three Snickers bars fell out onto the floor. The director, Gene Reynolds, didn’t even yell “cut” at first; he just put his head in his hands and started shaking with silent laughter.

But looking back at that Polaroid on the talk show, I realized something deeper. That little boy didn’t see a uniform he was supposed to hate. He saw a man who was kind, a man who was caught in a bad situation and doing his best to stay human.

In a world that was often very confusing and scary, even for a kid in 1968, he wanted to be the hero for the guy who was always being yelled at.

I kept that napkin for years. It eventually disintegrated, but the memory of that “rescue mission” stayed with me. People often ask me if I felt strange playing a German sergeant after everything my family went through in Europe. And I always tell them the same thing.

If I can make a child want to save a man just by being a little bit “clumsy” and “blind” to the rules, then I think the Sergeant did his job.

Besides, it was the best-tasting half-eaten candy bar I ever had.

It is a strange thing, isn’t it? Sometimes the most “foolish” characters are the ones who teach us the most about being human.

Do you remember a time when a fictional character felt completely real to you?